Go West Young-ish Man (ECT Day 24)
- Hiked Today: 24.7 miles (The Florida Trail)
- Total Hiked: 457 miles
- Total Paddled: 99.5 miles
Godwin Hammock Camp to C-34 Canal
Today consisted of one of the most pleasant morning walks followed by one of the most annoying afternoon walks. Let’s start with the good, shall we?
I did not set an alarm. Pretty much every morning I’ve woken well before my alarm regardless, but today I slept in until almost 7:00 am! I know some of y’all think I’m crazy calling that sleeping in, but it was light out folks. It was probably needed.
As I said, it was just a nice walk. Through prairie and oak forest I had winding trail with good tread. And, no rain!!! It was the coldest morning yet maybe though and definitely seemed the coldest overnight too. I’m not sure if the lack of bird calling was due to the calm after the storm, or maybe it was just that I couldn’t hear them with my beanie and two hoods cinched overtop.

A mushroom!
And this lichen that showed up just in this one patch of forest.
Hopefully it’s a good one and not some invasive kind. It looked hot pink from far away.
It was 11.5 miles to get to a fork in the road. This is the second split of the FT. The first was around Lake Okeechobee and this one goes two directions around Orlando. I am choosing to go west, which I didn’t know it until River Ranch, but it seems I’m a rarity. Maybe that fits my style though, not always going with the flow on such matters.
I honestly don’t have much reason to go one way or the other. Both seem to have a healthy amount of roads at some point. Early on in my planning I saw a comment posted by Lil Buddha (who’s sort of a thru-hiker legend and did the ECT) in favor of the west route, maybe that’s why?
The afternoon sucked. It was walking along the road shoulder, but it was more that my feet started throbbing again. Freaking lingerers. And my battery’s are all about depleted, so I started out with no music or anything. Eventually I couldn’t take it and gave myself 1 hour of distraction via tunes. That helped. And the sun was out, so my solar charger was soaking in the rays!
I found a canal to camp by and it was pretty nice. The best part was that some trail angel had left gallon jugs of drinking water! I didn’t have to filter canal water 🙂
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Comments 2
Sounds like lots of road walking til you get to the AT according to the ones ahead of you Peg Leg.
Great pictures, as always. Loved the color on that mushroom and then the pink moss! So pretty, and there’s an air plant growing right in the middle of all that pinkness. Thank you for both noticing and sharing these little life forms. Stay warm out there.